


Subterfuge

by goldtracing



Series: the arcane under the obvious [4]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Character Study, Historical Hetalia, Other, Power Dynamics, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:40:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28412562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldtracing/pseuds/goldtracing
Summary: Monaco has always been refined. It is the most elegant solution
Series: the arcane under the obvious [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2061180
Kudos: 6





	Subterfuge

> "You only saw her beauty. You never saw the iron underneath."
> 
> — Ned Stark, A Song of Ice and Fire

Monaco was always refined.

That was how it was supposed to be, how it was always supposed to be. She was a lady, the epitome of elegance, a grace that was divine and a disposition that was that of an angel.

An angel was what she really was. Her people and the rest of Europe, the rest of the Oxidant for that matter had a very rosy picture of those holy creatures. In the arts they were depicted as sweet and gentle, skin softer than swans down, voices that were mellifluous as harps and temperaments that could make hearts of stone belt like butter in the noon day sun.

Yet that wasn’t how the seraphim’s and the cupids and the archangels really were – that distorted picture of them was just wishful thinking that had twisted the eldritch into more human forms.

The actual servants of the Almighty were something else entirely – bodies carved out of gemstones with faces wreathed in fire, mouths that spoke with a thousand voices at once and never caught by the ears but rather resounded directly in the listeners mind – because the sublime couldn’t be squeezed into mortal tissue without disintegrating the flesh and vaporising the blood and turning the bones into dust.

Yet she existed, with the guise of the former and the nature of the latter, only subdued so that she could hid it and didn’t run risk of driving the humans she frequented with insane. It was the price she had to pay for being a personification. They were paradoxes and anomalies woven into her very essence, the span of centuries compressed into a youthful figure, the transcendent made fallible. Although, she would never regret such an existence.

Monaco was always refined.

It hid just how lethal she was.

Ever since she could remember, she had been feminine and over the course of her life, she had constantly strived to perfect that quality in her until she became the pinnacle of achievement. Those that equated femineity to weakness were utter and complete fools, deluded men that thought they knew all there was to the opposite sex despite shying away from conversing with them or other people that liked to sort the world into rigid boxes.

What they didn’t comprehend was that weakness never discriminates between the trivial categories that established; it ever picked one side and that was that of the vanquished.

Power doesn’t adhere to titles or jewelled objects – else the myth about the divine right of kings would be true. Instead of being taken, power is given, either by coercion or persuasion. And Monaco just knew how to convince people to hand her the reigns.

Through honeyed words and coy smiles, she enchanted people. Through carefully calculated laughs and fluid movements she ensnared them. She whispered in their ears so that her thoughts became their thoughts, so that they voiced her ideas and returned to her to spill secrets and open their hearts so that she could study them in entirety.

Sure, it was annoying at times when she couldn’t go directly for the kill and had to take convoluted paths to achieve her goals. However, she had learned patience, had learned to appreciate the burn of anticipation as she watched her plans come to fruition. After all, didn’t the slowest growing trees have the deepest roots and the hardest wood?

In total, it was even leaguing more preferable to strong manning her way through the world, to having to assert her dominance through aggression and petty power plays. Her methods simply had more finality to them – it is far more effective to charm somebody into doing ones bidding than to intimidate them into doing such.

That she was underestimated only played into hands. It meant that the other nations never regarded her, a small duchy, as a threat and ignored her as she amassed wealth and prestige. It meant that they never guessed her to be the piper that made people dance to her melody.

_Startled eyes and a throat bobbing at realising the precarious situation. At realising just how sharp her words were, how condescending her tone was as if her opposite was just an unimportant pipsqueak. The discovery that the beautiful face hid a spine of steel and a confidence that wasn’t arrogance and commanded people to let her have her way._

_People falling to their knees in front of her, kissing her fingertips, her rings, her knuckles. Raspy voices promising to give her the world on a silver platter and her gladly taking up on the offer. Men and women being so enticed by her, so ready to pamper her and give her what she wanted in order to please her._

Monaco was always refined.

And she planned to remain that way.

She liked being elegance and luxury personified too much to simply give it up. Adored how consideration and finesse could give her for more control. There was just something far more alluring to playing mysterious, to being empathic and hence so knowledgeable of how humans and nations function, to forsake her femineity and become a man in a woman’s body.

She was true to herself, true to her values, true to everything she had learned, because it was what brought her to where she stood in the modern day. 


End file.
